Now, in case you don't know what I mean by "looping" or if you're thinking "my mp3's repeat just fine when they get to the end of the song," allow me to explain the three major benefits of looping OGGs:

The music loop in an OGG can be the whole song or part of it. Some songs have an "intro" section (which is only supposed to be played once) followed by the main section which is supposed to repeat forever. Looping OGGs can do this, MP3s cannot.

With songs that loop back to the very beginning, there can sometimes be a slight delay with MP3s--even if you trim off all of the silence from the beginning and end of the song. With OGGs you can loop seamlessly.

Some songs in FF7 are not meant to loop (Steal The Tiny Bronco!, The Makou Cannon Is Fired ~ Shinra Explodes, etc.), but if you have the "loop custom files" option in FF7Music checked, they will loop. To solve this, I made the relevant OGGs loop through a section of silence once they are done playing. I also added them to the "exclude from resume" list (just in case you reload your game without closing FF7Music). Side note: it might also be possible to just uncheck the "loop custom files" option, but I didn't test this. Also, some people may choose to still use some MP3s, in which case they need this option to remain checked.

Excel spreadsheet with my notes and offsets for the LOOPSTART and LOOPLENGTH parameters for each song.

General notes:

I started this project using an old version of the OSTRE (downloaded via torrent because I thought it would save me some download time--which it did, but it totally wasn't worth it). Later, I used files from the latest version to update and fix those files which needed updating and fixing. If I missed any, I apologize (and please let me know if you notice!).

I tested most of the songs by playing through the whole game once. However, I might not have listened to every song loop through at least once to verify that it was looping correctly. Also, I made some changes afterwards based on my testing. So, everything should loop correctly, but please let me know if you find anything that needs fixing!

I used Goldwave while figuring out the looping points and Audacity to convert to OGGs. OGG conversion was done with quality=9, which may have increased the file sizes somewhat, but I didn't want to decrease the quality from the original. All files were converted exactly once from their OSTRE counterparts - no copies of copies! If you want more information on the process, tools, etc. that I used, feel free to ask.

A few notes about specific songs:

bee - 16 - Honeybee Manor: Both the OST and OSTRE have the following error in the song: At around 1:10 there is a sequence followed by an "answering" sequence from another instrument (I think it's an oboe, but I'm not very good at identifying instruments). The "answering" instrument is about 3-4 seconds later than it should be. For example, the first "answering" sequence should start around 1:14.5 but instead starts at about 1:18. Because I find this annoying, I have included an alternate file which is based on the original MIDI. To use this alternate file, comment out (by putting "//" at the beginning) the line "bee=16 - Honeybee Manor.ogg" and uncomment the line "//bee=(bee) 1-16 - Honeybee Manor.ogg" in your FF7MUSIC.ini file -- or select the appropriate file in your FF7Music configuration.

cintro: Though it seems from the name that this should be just the intro part of 05 - Those Chosen By The Planet, I found it very annoying to listen to just the short (12 second) intro over and over again while inside the Shinra Mansion. So, the ini file I provided uses the full version of the song (same as for the "cephiros" entry). If you want to use the intro-only version for this, just comment out the line "cintro=05 - Those Chosen By The Planet.ogg" and uncomment "//cintro=05 - Those Chosen By The Planet - Intro.ogg" or choose the appropriate file in your FF7Music configuration. There's also a no-intro version of this song, but I don't know if this is ever used in the game.

comical: Is this ever used in the game? Left blank in the ini I provided.

tb - 01 - Final Fantasy VII Main Theme B: Not sure if this is ever used in the game either.

oa - 02 - Opening ~ Bombing Mission and fin - 17 - World Crisis: I didn't change these or convert them to OGGs -- they are not actually used in the game since they are embedded in the movie files. But, I included them, unmodified, in the pack just for the sake of completion.

Thanks go to Covarr and Timber for their excellent tutorials. Thanks also go to Ficedula for FF7Music. Finally, a big thanks to Final FanTim for letting me use his OST Remastered Edition!

I think the only real problem with FF7Music now is that there is no fading.Can't really fix that until someone makes a music plugin for Aali's driver though.

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Side note: it might also be possible to just uncheck the "loop custom files" option, but I didn't test this. Also, some people may choose to still use some MP3s, in which case they need this option to remain checked.

This is correct, the loop custom files option does not effect the looping oggs, because the oggs never really stop playing.

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Both the OST and OSTRE have the following error

This makes me curious, did you make a looping version of the original OST too?Although uploading those here wouldn't really be legal, documenting the LOOPSTART and LOOPLENGTH parameters for each song would be great for those who would like to do it themselves .

Nope, just listened to it and heard the same error that I noticed in the OSTRE. I can't be the only one who noticed it! I mean, it sounds weird, as soon as I heard it I thought, "I don't think it's supposed to be like that". And I hadn't played the game (or heard that track) for over 2 years before that. Just compare the two files in my release, I'm sure you'll hear it too.

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Although uploading those here wouldn't really be legal, documenting the LOOPSTART and LOOPLENGTH parameters for each song would be great for those who would like to do it themselves

Actually, I did document all of the LOOPSTART and LOOPLENGTH parameters . It's all in the excel spreadsheet that's included in the release. However, they'll likely not be the exact same for the original OST files.

Hot diggity damn! You mind if I include this in a future version of my installer? I've already got FinalFanTim's go ahead to use his remastered soundtrack, but I don't wanna use somebody else's hard work without asking.

By the way, you really deserve your username. Seriously, this is awesome.

Well for me the music was central the Final Fantasy VII gaming experience, and with your looped OOG files you have successfully emulated the feel of the original game, with mp3 quality music, and for that we are grateful. ^_^.

Well, Sir Awesome, you have certainly lived up to your name. Thanks for this.

IIRC there are two world map themes.. TA and TB. TB plays once meteor is summoned, or maybe even earlier.

I think TB is for certain event scene, like 'in the Lifestream'. Actually, TB is later part of TA. And, I'm sure 'Bombing Mission' part is used for some scenes, though I can't recall where(haven't played it for years...).

How ever the lack of professionality really irritates me on this forum.

how much more professional can you get than installers that automatically find your FF7 directory and install mods for you? Maybe you would like me to ship future versions of the Team Avalanche Reconstruction Project to your house with a full-color CD, Jewel Case, and instruction manual containing back story on the game?

lol, you can even buy retail products that come with that anymore.

I'd suggest getting a few hundred posts under your belt before you criticize anyone's work around here, we're all REALLY tight like that.

iNs0MNiaC

For professionality I was thinking more of about clear guides that ff modding newbies can understand. Most of the info and topics I'v seen around the site which includes getting peoples mods applied to the game. It's like the mod makers are making those for just the regular / hardened forum users and ff7 modders. Just saying how it looks from my perspective.

Why am I expected to post 100 times on a pretty dead forum to prove my politeness or intelligence for that matter?Which on top of you first misunderstanding of my post due to arrogant assumptions and then you also start assaulting me with 10 tonns of sarcasm.

I can be polite, but not a clue what tact means so I can't do that. Besides I wouldn't consider my post offencive, I was simply saying in a constructive manner that the guide is a bit unclear and it's giving me trouble. Also I don't like seeing peoples work going to waste when it could all go towards the same goal of improving the game. That's what I meant under professionality. Now though the staff's attitude is part of that lack of professionality.

I'v modded a couple of C&C games with ongoing projects and I can gladly show my work.I even help out the community and some admins for the classic C&C games.

Here you can see how a ''guide'' is made. In a foolproof manner. For the pro's and the newbs(yes its one of my posts).

You don't have to be one to do things correctly...Thanks for linking at least, but I already downloaded that after I downloaded the OGG tracks. Also it seems to me like your installer contains a different set of sound files then the looping OGG's posted in this topic.

It was rather confusing and I had to download two 300mb + files with no clue on what I'm actualy installing or if I'm getting the mod that I actually wanted.

PS: I never really realised until I posted on this forum that describing how you feel about something will make you an ass. I'm so sorry I didn't instantly bow down to everyone to beg for forgiveness..... (it's how ye make it look like)

Here's the deal, friend. You don't register on a site and then begin complaining about everything. If all of this is too much chaos for your ginormous brain to handle, how about make a tutorial, or organize it yourself and post that? I don't tolerate arrogance, ever. After you've been here a year or so, you can feel free to show a little arrogance, you've earned it. Also, your "accomplishments" you linked are stupid.

Wow, you've gotta be the most pigheaded person I've ever seen on this forum. You insult us because of some imagined problems (I promise you that there are a number of in-depth tutorials similar to the one you linked to, even if you were too stupid to figure out how to look at stickies or use search), and then wonder why we get offended. I'm impressed. It really takes a lot to criticize people who created something that you either couldn't or wouldn't be able to make yourself, for not living up to your standards, because I'm sure that you deserve the best, right? Acting like you own the place is OBVIOUSLY your God-given right, and projecting your own arrogance onto the rest of us is only logical.

But I'm a nice guy, so I'm still gonna try and help you as best as I can. Muted people can still read threads, right?

PSF files. This is the soundtrack directly from the PlayStation version of the game.

Looping OGGs. These are, in fact, the exact same audio from this thread. I know, because when I was assembling that installer, I DOWNLOADED THE COLLECTION FROM THIS THREAD TO USE. It's also the default, and dead simple to use. You can *say* it's different, but you'd be wrong.

He probably downloaded yours BEFORE you included the OGGs, Covarr. Doesn't excuse his arrogance, though, but I can see where he is coming from on that one. By the way, GREAT GREAT GREAT Addition. I've been avoiding FFVII music because of the bad looping issues. Now it's not a concern. Thanks Covarr for your installer. Thanks Final FanTim for your OSTRE, thanks Ficedula for an interesting alternative to the music, and thanks Sir Awesome for being plain AWESOME and doing something that was prorbably overlooked as an option to getting it just right!